The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

by Hustvedt, Siri

  When he asked her how old she was, she lied to him and said, “Twenty-one.” The addition of those two years seemed significant, and she promised herself to tell him the truth later.

  They talked for hours that night, and Lily found out that he was born in Newark, New Jersey, and went to art school in New York, but he had studied art history, too, and that before he found a gallery, he had made money copying old masters’ paintings and selling them to rich men, mostly in Texas, who wanted a Caravaggio or a Renoir or a David for their wives and girlfriends. Shapiro was thirty-four years old, and he said that he had only recently “found his real work.” So far, he had sold four “real” paintings, but he was feeling optimistic. And Lily told him about acting and about playing Hermia in a A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He didn’t say it was an impossible business and much too hard to get into, or what made her think she could do that? He listened to her talk and smoked his cigars and asked her questions about why she wanted to be an actress and how she felt when she acted. She told him about Marilyn then. He didn’t even smile. He said he had loved Marilyn in The Misfits, and that what he had liked about her was that she seemed so alive, more alive than a lot of actors, fragile and vigorous at the same time. It made Lily very happy to hear him talk about Marilyn, and when he paused, she kissed him all over his face, and told him he was beautiful, and they made love again.

  In the morning Lily woke for work without an alarm. She had slept only two hours, and after she had carefully lifted the man’s arm off her waist, she sat up and put her feet on the floor. Her legs trembled with exhaustion, but when she looked at the sleeping man, she said to herself, I was lying there beside him. She dressed quickly and penned him a note. There were many things she would have liked to have written in that note: “I love you. I adore you. I think you’re the most wonderful person in the whole world,” but these sentences would have been unwise, so she wrote: “Dear Ed”—it was nice to call him Ed—“My telephone number is: 645-1133. Lily.” She studied her handwriting for an instant, fearing it looked childish, but she let it go, and tiptoed down the stairs past Ida. The woman was sleeping with her head on the desk, a jowl mashed by her right arm. Her makeup had faded during the night, and Lily thought her face looked softer and prettier than it had the night before.

  Division Street was empty and just beginning to turn gray with the dawn. She walked halfway across it and stopped. She looked past Berman’s and Tiny’s and Willy’s Shoe Repair to the Ben Franklin on the corner and told herself to remember exactly how the street looked on this Friday morning, June seventh, the summer after she turned nineteen years old. Then she headed across the pavement, and the same instant her left foot touched the curb, Lily saw the lights in the Ideal Cafe go on.

  * * *

  At five twenty-five, Martin Petersen pressed his face against the cafe window. Lily was certain of the time. She had just glanced up at the minute hand on the clock because Vince wanted the cafe doors opened “on the dot.” Martin’s nose was flattened snoutlike on the pane, and Lily would have laughed at him if he had appeared any less suddenly. But no sound had preceded his arrival—no engine in the street or feet slapping the pavement. Part of setting up for breakfast in the cafe was listening to Webster’s early-morning noises, and when she turned her head and saw Martin, dressed in the same clothes he had worn the night before, she jumped.

  He motioned to her.

  Lily unlocked the door and spoke to him through the screen. “What are you doing here so early?” she said.

  Martin walked toward the door and held out a piece of paper. “I-I-I,” he stammered, “brought you a map.”

  “What for?”

  “To, to get to my house.”

  Lily waved her hands at the sides of her face. “Martin Petersen,” she said in the voice of an aggravated schoolteacher. “I know where you live. My parents’ old house is a quarter of a mile away, and I lived in that house for seventeen years.”

  Martin walked up the single step and pushed his face into the screen. It made a dull pop as he increased the pressure, pushing his forehead, mouth and chin against the wire netting as if he wanted to burst it.

  Looking at Martin, she saw that the tiny crosshatch pattern of the screen was etching itself into the skin of his face, and she also saw that he didn’t care. Stubborn, determined and blind, Martin refused to follow the rules that came automatically to most people, and Lily felt an urge to plow her fist straight into that big, white face that distorted the shape of the screen. Behind Martin she saw Pete Lund stepping out of his blue Ford.

  “Cut it out!” she whispered to Martin. “You’ll break it.”

  Lily unlatched the screen door, let Martin inside and held the door for Pete, who nodded at her.

  After Martin had looked around the cafe suspiciously, like a kid playing Cold War spy, he handed Lily a little square of folded paper. He stuck his now-checkered face close to hers and whispered, “S-s-say it again.”

  Lily stepped back and shook her head. She could feel the edge of the folded paper cutting into her palm.

  Vince spoke from behind her, his voice commanding but not yet angry. “A customer, Lil’.”

  “Coming,” Lily said.

  “Say it again,” Martin was whispering.

  “Dollface!”

  “I’m coming, Vince.” Lily looked behind her. Vince looked redder than usual. She turned back to Martin. His eyes were enormous, blue and desperate. She didn’t want to look at those eyes anymore. She hated that mooning, pleading face and wanted it to vanish. “Mouth,” she said. Then she said it again more loudly, “Mouth.” She leaned toward him and growled, “Mouth! Okay?”

  Martin smiled. Lily thought it was the smile of a drunk—loose-lipped and giddy. She turned away from him and walked toward Vince.

  “Is that a customer or not?” he barked at her, pointing at Pete Lund.

  “Relax, Vince,” Lily said. She glanced at the clock. “It’s five thirty-four.” Pete Lund was quietly reading the Chronicle. “Does he look upset? Is he demanding my attention? You know what he wants to eat. I don’t even have to take his order. Go in the damned kitchen and cook it. I know you. You’re mad about something else. Probably Boom. Is he still living with you? He doesn’t want to go back to his mom, does he?”

  The man folded his arms across his chest and stared at her. “How come I hired the only two girls in this little shit-hole town who talk back?”

  “Because you hate wimps, Vince, that’s why. And sensitive types quit on you. Remember Cindy? She ran out of here bawling after three days.”

  “Aw, get off it, that little broad couldn’t take a joke.”

  “Come on, Vince, that wasn’t a joke. It was a filthy, disgusting story, and you told it to shock her.” Lily smiled. “Is Boomer driving you nuts?”

  “That kid doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going. I’d throw him out if it weren’t for that goddamned woman.”

  “What’s her problem?”

  “When he’s with her, she doesn’t want him, but when he’s not there, she does.”

  “So she doesn’t,” Lily said.

  Vince shook his head. “And he can’t stay away. He’s like a lush sneaking a drink. She kicked him out, but he won’t blame her, takes it out on the husband—not that he ain’t a first-class sleazeball.” Vince paused. “What was that all about?” He pointed with his thumb at the door.

  Lily looked at Vince. “I don’t know,” she said, and she meant it. “He’s beginning to get on my nerves, but what it’s all about, I couldn’t tell you.”

  After serving her first four customers, Lily took a break behind the counter and pulled the map out of her pocket. One glance told her that whatever Martin might have said about “directions” to his house, he had something much more complicated in mind. When she looked more closely, she saw that what Martin had given her wasn’t a map so much as a drawing representing two unfolded maps, complete with creases where the imaginary, not the real, paper had been folded.
The maps had been drawn in such a way as to give an illusion of depth, as if one transparent map were floating on top of the other. The uppermost map showed Webster and the area around it and the map below showed Athens and the fairy wood from the play. Division Street was boldly labeled, as were the Ideal Cafe and the Stuart Hotel, but no stores. Beyond the town she saw the Bodler place, Heath Creek, Heath Woods, the Jesse James Caves, and up in the far right-hand corner Martin had drawn an arrow and written “To your Dahl Grandparents.” Not far away from the arrow was the Overland farm marked with a large star and a drawing of an oblong box or chest. Her grandparents were both dead, and there was nothing left of their farm, so the notation struck her as odd. The Overland place was still there, only minutes from where her grandparents had lived, but she hadn’t thought of it for a long time. She had never laid eyes on the children who lived upstairs in that house, and she tried to remember what was wrong with them. They couldn’t speak. Her grandmother had told her the two girls rocked back and forth for hours and hours, each in a corner. But what did that box mean? The drawing irritated her. She sensed Martin was speaking to her again in that roundabout way of his, hinting at things she couldn’t grasp. And then, right before she lifted her eyes from the paper, she noticed that around the edge of both maps, Martin had written the word “Sleep.” Lily puzzled over it for a couple of seconds, looked up at the red booths and then over at Clarence Sogn’s sunburnt head, and wished she hadn’t said the word for Martin. It had been wrong to say it, but why? It was because he had looked so satisfied. When she remembered it, she felt sick.

  Around twelve-thirty, just before her shift ended, Lily cut two pieces of lemon meringue pie for the old Moss sisters.

  “It’s hives, dear,” Leonora said. “I’ve had them a hundred times. It’s that new detergent you used on the sheets.”

  “I’m afraid it’s shingles,” Bessy said.

  “Nonsense, dear. I had shingles just after the war, you remember. They don’t look a thing like hives.”

  Just after Bessy had leaned forward and hissed the words, “Hives don’t crust!” Edward Shapiro walked into the Ideal Cafe. He gripped the counter, and with his nose an inch from Lily’s, he said in a low but clear voice that Bert must have overheard because she dropped the cover to the pie case on the counter: “I missed you.” Lily forgot Martin Petersen then, and she forgot to say good-bye to Bert and Vince and Boomer, and she forgot to take off her apron. She followed the man out the door and onto Division Street, where he took her in his arms and kissed her in full view of every customer in the cafe as well as half a dozen people on the sidewalk. Then he put his arm around her and walked with her up the steps into the Stuart Hotel.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Lily asked Ed a question she knew she shouldn’t ask. She hesitated, understood it would be smarter not to give in to her curiosity, but the desire was strong, like wanting to pick at a scab that’s bound to bleed if you touch it.

  “What’s she like?” she said to the ceiling as she lay on the bed.

  “Who?” Ed turned to look at her. He had been standing in front of his canvas.

  “Your wife.”

  He looked at her and smiled. “Maybe you should tell me. It seems that my life is an open book.”

  “No, I just know you have a wife and she’s not here.”

  “No, she’s not here.”

  “Okay,” Lily said. “I take it back.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s all right.” He walked over to the bed and sat down. “I was married for five years.” He paused. “It fell apart. She’s a painter. Her work is very different from mine. She does these tiny little paintings.” Ed traced a rectangle in the air with his fingers about as big as a postcard. “They’re pretty abstract, but once in a while you can make out a little object in them—a pair of scissors or a hat or a pillbox.” He paused. “I always respected her work, but I don’t think she ever liked mine. She never said it, but I got the feeling she thought my stuff was oversized and vulgar. She always seemed surprised when other people showed interest in it.”

  “But what’s she like?”

  “I thought I was telling you.” He leaned across the bed and took her hand. “Maybe not.”

  “How could you marry someone who didn’t like your paintings?”

  Ed pressed his lips together and was silent. “I guess I didn’t know until later. We met when we were eighteen, and I think I found her mysterious. I never understood what she was about really, and I ran after her for years.”

  “She must be beautiful, though.”

  Ed smiled at Lily. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you said she was mysterious and you chased after her, and I think men see pretty women, and they imagine all kinds of things inside the prettiness before they even know the person, and then they’re stuck running and running.”

  “Are you speaking from experience, Lily Dahl?” He looked at her tenderly with his eyes narrowed and then grabbed his T-shirt, which was hanging from the iron rail at the end of the bed.

  Lily leaned back and looked at him. “You’re the third.”

  Ed gave her a surprised look. “Is that what you thought I asked you?”

  “I’m telling you. There were two others. I broke up with the second guy the day before yesterday.”

  Ed pulled the T-shirt over his head and reached for his jeans. He forgot his boxer shorts, which were lying beside them, and pulled the jeans up over his naked thighs. “Is this for the record, or are you telling me something else?” he said.

  Lily bit her lip and looked at him. She looked for her shirt, the same one she had worn yesterday. I have to change, she thought. Then she said, “I guess I just like things to be clear. Do you know what I mean?”

  He walked over to the window and looked out. Lily studied his back and wondered if he was hiding some emotion. She thought that if she were in her own room now, she might be able to see his face.

  “It’s rare, isn’t it, for things to be clear?” He didn’t turn around. Lily thought he might have been looking into her window across the street, and thinking this made her sad. They were silent for at least a minute. Lily dressed quickly, grabbed her crumpled apron from the bed and walked to his door.

  “I’m going home now,” she said. “Good-bye, Ed.”

  He turned then and walked toward her. He kissed her hard on the mouth and said, “I’ll call you later.”

  Lily lifted her face to his. He likes me better when he knows I’m leaving, she said to herself.

  “What’s that look?”

  “What look?” she said.

  “That look, that look of irony and smugness.”

  “Guess,” she said. Then she turned around and walked out the door.

  There were no sounds from Mabel’s apartment, and Lily supposed she was either out or asleep. Mabel often slept better during the day than at night. Lily closed her curtains and thought about Ed. I shouldn’t have asked about her. “Elizabeth.” She said the name aloud to hear it. Not Eliza or Liza or Liz, not Lizzie or Beth or Betsy or Bess. She wondered why anyone would want to paint nothing, and then she decided to straighten her room. She tossed a T-shirt and a pair of dirty jeans into her bathroom hamper, walked back into her room, saw the toe of one of the stolen shoes sticking out from under her bed and leaned down to pick it up. In the filtered light that passed through the curtain, she made out the shadow of a foot inside. She didn’t remember this imprint. She knew it wasn’t her foot because hers had a high instep and whoever had worn these shoes before had flat feet. Somehow she had missed that, and she had a sudden, irrational thought that the shoes were changing on her, that traces of their former owner were slowly beginning to appear on them. The shoes did look worse to her, no question about it, more creased and soiled than she remembered, but then maybe she had seen wrong in that dingy garage. Lily brought the shoes close to her nose and sniffed. The Bodlers’ garage smelled like her grandmother’s root cellar, and the odor brought back a memor
y of lying beside the open door of the cellar, inhaling that good earthy smell, and she saw the small white house in her mind. Her grandfather had stopped farming during the depression when the bank took back most of the land, and that must have been when the place went quiet. Even the house had made no noise. There was no plumbing, so it had never hummed or gurgled as her own house had, and the cows and pigs and chickens that had once been there, animals Lily knew by name, because her father had told her about them, had never been more than thoughts for her. Lily glanced at the night table and saw the book Mabel had given her. She was planning to read it. Middlemarch. The last time she was inside her grandparents’ house was after the vandals had ruined it. She remembered feeling glad that both her grandparents were dead by then and that nobody lived there anymore. She and her father had walked through the door to find smashed mirrors and windows, broken furniture, crockery in pieces on the floor, and that same uncanny silence in the house.

  Through the wall came panting and then a short, breathless cry. Lily sat very still and listened. Was Mabel sick? A nightmare? She heard the woman sigh; then her footsteps sounded on the floor. Not long after that, she heard the typewriter. Lily had grown used to that old typewriter. It had come to mean sleep for her. I’m so tired, she thought. She remembered the chicken coop at the Overland farm. She decided she would look at Martin’s drawing again and fell asleep.

  Lily woke up to the sound of the phone ringing.

  It was Ed. She heard his voice on the telephone for the first time, and the sound of it seemed to make her body warmer. She suddenly felt conscious of her own voice and spoke softly into the receiver, trying to sound unconcerned, as if she wasn’t all that glad, but when he invited her out to dinner at Rick’s, Lily said yes right away and laughed, which probably undid all the studied nonchalance that had gone before.